1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to the field of semiconductor devices. In one aspect, the present invention relates to high-performance field effect transistor devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
As semiconductor device scaling continues into the nanoscale regime, the ability to control leakage currents and otherwise develop manufacturable devices becomes more difficult. Double-gate MOSFET technologies, such as FinFET devices, have been developed to overcome such limitations to transistor scaling. While thinner body FinFET devices can be used to obtain more aggressive gate length scaling, to suppress short-channel effects, and to increase the effective channel width by combining multiple fins, the ability to fabricate fin structures with tight or narrow pitches was conventionally limited by capabilities of standard photolithography technologies. Prior attempts to overcome the limitations of photolithographic technologies have proposed spacer lithography hard mask techniques which form spacers on an etched sacrificial polysilicon layer, and then use the spacers as hard masks when forming the underlying fin structures. However, there are certain disadvantages with these conventional solutions in terms of pattern fidelity, critical dimension variation, and pattern density that result from non-uniformities in the polysilicon mandrel spacing and line width caused by variations in the trim and etch processes, as well as non-uniformities in the spacer width caused by variations in the spacer formation processes.
Accordingly, a need exists for an improved semiconductor manufacturing process for forming FinFET transistor devices that address various problems in the art that have been discovered by the above-named inventors where various limitations and disadvantages of conventional solutions and technologies will become apparent to one of skill in the art after reviewing the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings and detailed description which follow, though it should be understood that this description of the related art section is not intended to serve as an admission that the described subject matter is prior art.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements for purposes of promoting and improving clarity and understanding. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the drawings to represent corresponding or analogous elements.